Due to the limited efficiency of the establishment of charge on battery electrodes, the charging process is always accompanied by side reactions, the most important being the decomposition of water combined with a gassing action. The differentiable charge efficiency of the positive and negative plates has the result that oxygen is generated very early, whereas hydrogen is principally set free only near the end of the charging process. This oxygen can be reduced not only at moist negative plates that are not covered by electrolyte; rather, the transformation proceeds better and more evenly at negative plates which are submerged in the liquid electrolyte. This fact, and the special charging behavior of battery electrodes, in particular with lead batteries having antimony-free or low-antimony plate grids, make possible a transformation of the oxygen at the negative electrodes independent of whether the electrolyte is liquid or fixed (bound or hindered) without having to enclose the battery gas tight, so that loss of water and gassing can be avoided. On this basis, it is known from the Austrian Patent Schrift OE-PS No. 259 654 to guide the oxygen accumulated in the gas chamber of the storage battery toward the lower end of the negative plates by means of a pump, so that the oxygen rises from within the electrolyte and is reduced upon contact with the negative plates and transformed into water. However, this collector is very expensive due to the necessity of providing a pump apparatus in the gas chamber of the storage battery; moreover, the overall height of the battery becomes greater, which is especially disadvantageous with starter batteries, for whose installation increasingly less space is available.